She watched him destroy the words. The words that were to her and Rune. The letter with the up down up down word that she knew was ‘Mama’.
As he was tearing, something she thought she had was gone.
The last of the paper landed. The bin lid dropped. Papa picked up his coffee.
‘It’s for the best, Lotte, I promise,’ he said, and his lips moved rapidly, without sound, catching and dropping words before he kissed her gently on the top of her head.
He turned and left the kitchen.
As she heard the boiler churn to life and the shower rinse on, she closed her eyes and tried to blot away the image with the palms of her hands. She pressed hard into her eyes, into the stinging, blinking stars, and opened them. It was her fault. She should have put it somewhere safer. Stupid Lotte, stupid.
Papa had torn up the letter. The letter that had made her feel Mama.
Lotte swallowed and opened the bin.
She had to rescue the paper from the mess of food and waste at the bottom of the bin. Bin juice. Trying hard not to think, she acted quickly. Plunging her hand down and picking out the envelope first, then piece after piece. She nestled them all into her apron. The bin rubbish hadn’t stained them, but they were damp from whatever resided at the bottom. She heard the pit-pat of rain and the usual morning noises coming from upstairs – footfall, radio, toothbrush.
Her fingertips sickeningly touched upon the plump flesh of softened, leaking, rotten cherries. A wave of iron-rust sickness heaved up into her throat. She stood and the lid hushed closed.
Tucking the torn pages, the envelope and the cover of the exercise book up in her apron, she waddled with difficulty out of the room and quietly up the stairs.
RUNE
He awoke in a woolly grogginess wearing yesterday’s clothes, which felt square and crunchy against his skin. He lay on his face and tried to move his tongue; it seemed glued to his cheek. Swallowing hard didn’t help; he coughed harshly as he heard Lotte’s voice in the hallway. The simultaneous noises shattered his nervous system; his entire body was taut and aching.
He felt sorry for himself in the shadowy moment between waking and being awake. In the pillowy present, in which nothing before, nor to come, entered his thoughts, he was weighed down under layers of shame.
His arm was numb and limp from how he’d slept on it at a strange angle; clenching his fist sent a ferocious bite of life up to his elbow. He gingerly lifted his head. His mouth was fuzzed over and his throat dry.
The pity distorted into revulsion as he rolled over to the smell of weak sunshine on dust and his own stale breath. When he opened his eyes, he noticed a triangle of light, filtered through dirty windows, shining hazily into his room. He lifted his numb hand and passed it through the shard of heatless light.
Lotte burst into his room.
‘Roo! He. He. He. He. He. Roo . . .’ she said, re-jangling all of Rune’s recovering senses, and in her greeting a switch flicked on. A mask in which to perform the daily task of living slipped over him, like a cloud across the sun. A performance orchestrated solely for Lotte.
‘The bin has stained them and they are torn up and I. I. I. Papa did it,’ she added, taking a breath before continuing. ‘Papa won’t let you take me to school either he says Barbie-woman has to take me I don’t like her but Papa says that is not kind I have to go with her and you don’t but this came and I don’t know why he did it but I opened it to you and to me and I tried I really tried . . .’ – her words slurred into each other as she took a breath – ‘but look . . .’ And she showed him the contents of her apron.
At first he thought it was dirty confetti, and then he thought it was rice and poppy seeds. Only when she lifted her apron higher did he see it was paper.
‘Why did he do this?’ she asked, crying.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know it was to Rune and Lotte. Lotte and Rune. It was from Mama.’
‘What?’ he asked, stunned into standing. ‘It can’t be from Mama,’ he said.
‘But it is. It was,’ Lotte corrected, tears falling from her chin. ‘Mama sent us something, but, but, but . . .’
‘Lotte.’ Papa’s voice calling. ‘Time to get ready.’
‘What do we do?’ Lotte begged.
Rune shrugged; it hurt to say it again. Over and over. Once was enough at the time and now once was too much. He stretched and then touched Lotte gently on the shoulders. ‘It can’t be from Mama because Mama is dead,’ he said. ‘Maybe you read it wrong?’
‘I. Did. Not,’ she said. ‘I tried and I slowed my thoughts down and I did it properly – I swear!’
‘Lotte. Now.’ Papa’s voice was not to be messed with. ‘And no tutu,’ he added. Lotte squeaked.
‘What do we do?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’ He looked at the shards of mess in her apron. ‘Whatever it was, it’s gone now,’ he said. There was nothing salvageable in the shreds of paper.
‘But. But. But,’ Lotte stammered. ‘It was from Mama.’
And he hated his father in that moment. What harm could it have possibly caused for him to let her have something. Anything. The edges of his vision were dark, but Lotte, at the centre, was yellow and bright; her cheeks were pink and damp.
His stomach clenched, fisted, raw.
Papa knocked on his door. ‘Boy!’ he called. ‘Tell your sister Joann leaves in five minutes and she will be ready in time.’
Rune looked at Lotte’s snot-smeared, teared-up face.
‘Rune!’ Papa’s voice from behind the door.
‘Okay,’ Rune called back. They waited until he could hear Papa’s footsteps receding.
‘Please make it come back,’ Lotte begged.
‘I can’t,’ Rune said. His words knotted in his heart, and he looked to the floor to prevent seeing Lotte’s disappointed face.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but the room was empty. Lotte had left the door ajar.
LOTTE
Her shoe-box-that-was-her-treasure-box was still under the bed. She tipped the contents of her apron into it and then pulled out a few pieces of the torn paper, filtering them through her hands as she would do with butter and flour to make a sweet pastry for Apfelstrudel or, her favourite, Puddingbrezel.
With a dry mouth and her stomach gritty, she pulled out the picture of her and Roo taken by one of Papa’s ‘Barbie-friends’ years ago. They were standing side by side, Roo looking straight at the camera; she had been looking slightly away.
She looked at his face. He was no longer the brother who made her laugh, told her stories and held her hand. He tried, but that brother had gone. Nothing in the picture could tell her where he went. She stared at her brother’s image then placed it back in the box. Her brother had shrunk into grey sadness.
‘I am more than my Down’s syndrome.’ She repeated the mantra Roo had taught her.
She would take the pieces to school and find a way to get them back. She would do it on her own.
Inde-pen-dent-ly.
She picked up the photo once more and raised it to her lips, as if she could kiss him back; overflowing but empty all at once, she closed her eyes. She could see his face, his mouth curved into a rare smile. She was always able to get the best smiles out of him. But now she could barely find his eyes. He was lost. Maybe the words from Mama would bring Roo back to her too. She brought the picture down to her chest to feel his presence there.